Bill Gates currently owns 2,42,000 acres of property in the United States, making him the country’s largest private landowner.
According to The Land Study, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and the world’s fourth-richest male, owns farmland in 18 states in the US, either personally or by transactions made through his Cascade Investments with third-party organizations.
Moneycontrol was unable to validate the information in the survey objectively, the survey lists the following total land asset holding in various states in the US.
- Arkansas (47,927 acres)
- Arizona (25,750 acres),
- California (4,905 acres)
- Colorado (2,270 acres)
- Florida (14,828),
- Idaho (9,233 acres)
- llinois (17,940 acres)
- Iowa (522 acres)
- Michigan (2,167 acres),
- Mississippi (16,963 acres)
- Nebraska (20,588 acres)
- New Mexico (1 acre)
- North Carolina (874 acres)
- Ohio (8,915 acres)
- Washington (16,097 acres)
- Wisconsin (16,097 acres)
- Wyoming (975 acre)
Other billionaire private farmland owners, according to the report, include Stewart and Lynda Resnick, co-founders of Wonderful Corporation. The latter owns 190,000 acres and grows Wonderland Halos mandarins, Wonderful Pistachios, and POM Wonderful for their brand.
The step into agriculture, according to Forbes, is unsurprising. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced grants worth $306 million for farmers in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa in 2008.
Besides, according to Forbes, the foundation has invested in the “production and propagation of climate change-resistant “super crops,” for which it developed an NGO named Gates Ag One.
Although it’s unclear how Gates is using his farmland, Forbes refers to Gates Ag One and Cascade subsidiary Cottonwood Ag Management (which encourages sustainable agricultural practices to conserve soil, water supplies, and crops) as potential candidates.
Cascade Investments did not respond to requests for information, according to the report.
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